Epilogue Quill #2
The couch creaked beneath us with every snap of his hips, the newspaper forgotten entirely on the kitchen table, and the tea gone cold.
The whole world narrowed down to the drag and slide of him inside me, the way he angled just right to hit my prostate so I could barely think.
I raked my nails down his back, feeling the ridges of scale beneath my fingertips, and he growled low in his throat, the sound rumbling through his chest and into mine where we were pressed together.
“Aeron,” I chanted, half plea, half prayer, as the pleasure built and coiled tighter with every thrust. “I’m close, I’m so close—”
“I’ve got you,” he said, reaching between us to wrap his hand around me again, stroking in time with his thrusts until I could resist it no longer. I came hard, spilling hot over his fist and my own stomach, my whole body clenching around him as I cried out his name.
He followed only seconds later, burying himself deep inside me with a groan that reverberated through the walls. His hips stuttered as he emptied himself inside me, his forehead dropping to rest against mine as we both shook through the aftershocks of our mutual orgasms.
For a long moment, neither of us moved, tangled together on a couch that had definitely not been designed for this kind of activity, sweat cooling on our skin, hearts slowly returning to something like a normal rhythm.
“Well,” I said finally, voice wrecked. “That’s one way to distract us from Council hearings.”
Aeron huffed out a laugh against my throat, pressing a lazy kiss there before lifting his head to grin down at me, golden eyes soft in a way that still made my chest ache with how much I loved him. “Works every time.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“You love me anyway.”
I shook my head. “Of course I love you.”
We stayed there tangled together on the couch for a while longer, neither of us particularly eager to move. At least until there was a soft snap in the air and a folded letter appeared neatly on the coffee table. Aeron groaned like the sound had personally offended him.
“Ignore it,” I said, tightening my arms around his neck.
“It’s probably Elias,” he replied, already sitting up despite my protest. “He’s been sending letters to keep me updated on everything that’s going on.”
“Are you sure you want to look at that right now?”
Aeron nodded. “Yeah. It’ll just bother me if I don’t.”
I let him go with a reluctant sigh. He sat up on the couch, reaching out to grab the envelope from the table and turned it over.
It was sealed with a wax stamp shaped like a four-pointed star.
He tore it open while I sat up and wrapped myself around him, and I watched his expression shift from mild annoyance to something more complicated as he scanned the page.
“What is it?”
“It’s from Elias.” He handed the letter over, and I took it, still warm from his hands. “Go ahead. Read it.”
Aeron,
I wanted to write you to personally let you know that the necromancy books in your grandfather’s possession have been found.
Instead of being returned to the Elder Council vaults, they have been destroyed.
The rest of the council wasn’t particularly happy with that result, but we couldn’t risk another issue like this in the future.
So please, rest assured that all hints of necromancy that we know about have been erased.
We also found a small collection of books, journals really, in your grandfather’s possession that are quite interesting.
They detail the lives of at least three dragons in the distant past that took mates of a different species.
While I’ve only begun to research them, I can say that the dragon’s mates in each case seemed to live very extended lives.
There’s no mention of a special ceremony or ritual to create this extension of life, which leads me to believe that it happened naturally due to the mate bond between them.
I will be more than happy to share the books with you, and we can go through them together.
I know the lifespan of your different species has been weighing on you both.
We’re still not completely sure how accurate these accounts are, but I think there’s at least some hope to be gleaned from these pages.
We will unravel that mystery once the hearing with the Elder Council is over.
My last piece of news is extraordinary.
We found the three eggs your grandfather mentioned, buried deep in the Pyre Estate.
They were kept in a room enchanted to stay warm enough to keep them viable and after several tests, we can confirm that they are in fact, still alive.
If these are indeed the ones left from your parents, I’m happy to say that you will have siblings.
Soon, if you wish to start the incubation process immediately.
As their only living relative, you have the first choice whether you want to raise them yourself.
The Elder Council will happily do it for you, but I wanted to give you time to think it over before you make any decisions.
For the time being, the eggs have been kept a secret and moved to the sanctuary in the Veil.
A family is waiting for you if that is what you wish.
We’ll be in touch.
-Elias
My breath caught somewhere near the bottom of the page. The eggs. Aeron’s mother’s eggs, the ones Thaddeus said he was keeping safe until he’d ‘fixed’ the world. Three of them. Still viable, according to whatever tests Elias had done to check them.
I looked up at Aeron, searching his face. He was staring at the letter like he didn’t know how to process it all.
“Aeron.”
“I have siblings,” he said, like he was testing the words out loud for the first time, seeing if they’d hold his weight. “Or I could. If I hatch them.”
“Do you want to?”
He didn’t answer right away, his jaw working, his eyes bright in a way that had nothing to do with anger this time. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about raising a dragon, let alone three of them. I barely feel qualified to run my own life right now. I feel like I’m still just a kid.”
“You wouldn’t be doing it alone,” I said without a second thought. “I’d help. Wild would probably insist on being an annoying honorary uncle whether we wanted him to or not. Probably Atlas and Caden too.”
That got a small laugh out of him. “Gods… those poor hatchlings.”
I set the letter down on the coffee table and reached for his hand, lacing our fingers together the way we did now without even thinking about it. “You don’t have to decide today. Or this week. Or even this year, honestly. They’re safe. That’s what matters right now. But the possibility is there.”
He nodded slowly, some of the tension easing from his shoulders, though I could tell the idea had already taken root in his heart.
A family. Not the one he’d lost, not the one built on lies and centuries of festering grief, but something new.
Something that could be entirely his own to shape, if he wanted it.
“You saw the other part, right?” he asked. “Something about dragon bonds. Journals they found…”
“I saw it,” I answered. “Do you think it could be true?”
“It has to be,” he nodded. “That’s why he wanted to keep us apart.
” I could hear the pieces clicking together in his voice.
“He knew. He must have known this whole time. If our bond held, if it deepened the way real mate bonds do, you wouldn’t just live a normal witch’s lifespan next to me, growing old while I stayed the same.
You’d have decades more than that. Maybe centuries. ”
“And he didn’t want that,” I finished for him. “Because it would prove the Purity Front’s foundations of thinking wrong. That being together is actually beneficial.”
Aeron’s hand tightened around mine, and when I looked up at him, his eyes were wet, grief and fury filling them once more.
“I’m not losing you in ninety years,” he said, low and fierce. “Not to old age, not to anything, if I can help it.”
“You don’t know if they’re true,” I said gently, even as my heart pounded traitorously hard in my chest. “Elias said the journals still need to be studied, that they might not be accurate.”
“They’re true,” he said, pulling me into his lap, his forehead pressed to mine. “I can feel it in my bones.”
I closed my eyes, breathing him in, letting myself believe, just for a moment, that maybe we’d get more time than I’d ever let myself hope for. That maybe, after everything, the universe owed us that much.
“I love you,” I said, knowing that there was nothing else I could offer that would mean more in this moment.
“I love you too, Red,” he replied, pressing his forehead against mine. “Forever.”
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